dead innocent

Qiao Shishi found Lu Xia's villa according to the address marked on the real estate certificate, only to find that Lu Xia and Zhou Quliang were neighbors.

The half-mountain villa area covers almost half of the mountainside, and each villa has a piece of greenery to ensure the privacy of the residents. Last time when she and Chen Zhiyang came to find Zhou Shiyang's car, they found a villa door separated from Zhou Quliang's villa by a flower garden Locked tightly, the yard is overgrown with weeds, and it has not been lived in for a long time, and it looks like it has not been taken care of.

It was early morning when Qiao Shishi and Zhao Feng arrived at the villa area in the middle of the mountain. The shadows of the trees beside the corridor were quiet, the street lights were dense, and the only thing around was the sound of their footsteps on the stone road. It seemed that the whole mountain had fallen into a peaceful sleep with the night.

A black figure suddenly sprang out from a place without street lights in front, and quickly rushed towards them head-on.

Qiao Shishi was taken aback, and immediately stopped to prepare for self-defense. When the black shadow entered the range of the streetlight, she realized it was a big golden retriever, a dumpling.

Dumpling sticking out her tongue and flicking her long hair, she threw herself on Qiao Shishi.

Qiao Shishi caught its two front paws, and said joyfully, "Call me sister."

Zhao Feng stood beside him and asked with a puzzled expression, "You guys know each other?"

Qiao Shishi stroked the golden retriever's neck, looked up and saw Zhou Quliang under the streetlight tens of meters away.

Wearing home clothes, Zhou Quliang was standing under a street lamp and making a phone call. When he saw Qiao Shishi and the others from a distance, he waved his hand as a signal.

As soon as she saw Zhou Quliang, Qiao Shishi shook off the coat that Zhao Feng kindly put on her shoulders to keep out the cold, and threw it into Zhao Feng's arms.

Leading the golden retriever to Zhou Quliang, Zhou Quliang just ended the call, his face was a little anxious, but he still asked calmly: "Are you looking for me? I have already sent people to the old city to assist Captain Fu in searching for the body."

About half an hour ago, Qiao Shishi and Zhao Feng also learned about the large explosion that was taking place in the old city with the nature of destroying evidence. They wanted to rush to the scene to help, but Fu Yi asked them to continue tracking Lu Xia according to the collected clues.Fang Yu's case is about to be solved, while Zhou Shiyang's case is still surrounded by confusion. Both cases must be followed up at the same time, and they will all be solved within a week, otherwise he and Chu Xingyun will not be able to go around.

"No, we're looking for your neighbor."

Qiao Shishi found Lu Xia's photo from his mobile phone and showed him: "Do you have any impression of this person?"

Zhou Quliang took a closer look under the warm yellow light of the street lamp, and said cautiously with a slightly hesitant tone: "A little bit, but I'm not sure if it's the person in the photo."

"Have you seen him?"

"About more than half a month ago, I just drove the car to the door, and saw a car coming out of the house next door that no one came in and out all the year round. The man in the car seemed to be him, with a thin face and nothing in his eyes. Spirit."

More than half a month ago?

Qiao Shishi thought for a while, and asked, "August 28?"

Zhou Quliang took out his mobile phone and flipped through the memo, nodded and said: "Yes, on August 28th, I flew to Los Angeles at ten o'clock that night, and I happened to meet that person when I went home to pack my luggage."

August 28th was the day when the 'Professor' disappeared, and the 'Professor' had appeared near Lu Xia's residential area before, so there may be some kind of connection between these two people.

"What car was this guy driving? A black Volkswagen?"

Qiao Shishi was inexplicably excited, and felt that he had taken a big step closer to the truth.

Zhou Quliang pointed to the cover of the street lamp behind her, and said, "There are cameras here, you can tune the video, our security room is on duty at night."

After he pointed, Qiao Shishi saw the camera hidden under the lamp cover, and said to himself that the place where rich people live is indeed closely monitored.

Zhao Feng went to the security room to retrieve the video, so Qiao Shishi walked to the dark villa alone, with the silly dumpling by his side.

Zhou Quliang walked beside her with long legs and asked, "Are you going into that house now?"

Qiao Shishi said without hesitation: "Yes."

Zhou Quliang frowned slightly: "Are you alone?"

"Yes."

Zhou Quliang hesitated for a moment, and there was a hint of worry in his gentle and dignified expression, and said: "Then can I go in with you?" He said with a very modest smile: "Although I can't help you, but you are alone after all. Not safe."

Qiao Shishi tilted his head and looked at him, blinked his eyes, and smiled: "Okay, it happens that we don't have enough manpower."

In front of the locked wrought iron gate, Zhou Quliang gave the dumplings a command of 'sit', and the big golden retriever squatted at the base of the wall, and it really didn't move.

"It still does this?"

Master Qiao said in surprise.

"Shiyang trained."

She was even more surprised at the back, when she saw Zhou Quliang took off his coat and handed it to herself, then rolled up his long sleeves to his elbows, exposing his strong forearms, and nimbly grabbed the tree trunk and climbed up a red maple tree planted at the base of the wall tree, two or three times climbed up the two-meter-high fence, and then squatted on the fence and reached out to pick her up.

Qiao Shishi put on his coat and climbed up the tree very nimbly, then took his hand and jumped onto the fence.

Zhou Quliang took the lead in jumping off the two-meter-high wall. Due to the unevenness of the ground and the accumulation of gravel, he stopped Qiao Shishi who was about to jump down next, and stretched out his hands again to grab her waist like a child, holding her She took it.

Although Zhou Quliang was strong enough to make her land on the ground smoothly and gently, Qiao Shishi was still a little dizzy, thinking that she had worked in the field team of the criminal investigation team for so long, how could she go up to Chu Xingyun and down to her colleagues? Didn't one treat her like a rough old man?Such gentle, considerate and gentlemanly treatment is truly unprecedented.

She flicked her ponytail to drive away the little butterfly whirling in front of her eyes. She took out the small flashlight she carried with her from her pocket, turned on the flashlight and walked all the way to the door.

Of course, the door was locked tightly. Qiao Shishi tried to pull it, but couldn't open it, so he stuffed the flashlight into his mouth, bit it with his teeth, and then took out the wire that he had prepared earlier from his jeans pocket.

Under Zhou Quliang's slightly surprised gaze, Qiao Shishi bent the wire into a ring the size of a needle nose and inserted it into the keyhole, twisted it back and forth three or four times, and the door opened.

Qiao Shishi took off the flashlight, raised his eyebrows and smiled at him: "Personal skills."

As soon as I entered the room, the furniture was stale and damp due to being idle for a long time, and the door and windows were locked and airtight and the smell of fermentation was constantly accumulated like a wave, and powdery dust was floating in the air illuminated by the light.

The pungent smell made Qiao Shishi sneezed uncontrollably, and raised his hand to disperse the dust in front of him.

Zhou Quliang tried to turn on the light, but the light didn't turn on.

"Is there a power outage?"

Master Qiao asked.

Zhou Quliang pointed out to her the power board buried under the wall of the living room on the first floor with the red indicator light on: "It should be that the homeowner turned off a few circuits by himself."

Qiao Shishi shone a flashlight on the stairs leading to the second floor, and said as he walked forward, "Then you stand at the door and help me—"

As he said that, Qiao Shishi was stumped by himself. After thinking for a while, he looked back at him and said the easiest word to understand: "Watch the wind."

Zhou Quliang: ...

Just now they slipped the door to pick the lock, and now the accomplices are watching the wind. The two of them are really no different from a group of robbers who sneaked into the room.

Qiao Shishi stepped on the stairs with his leather boots and jumped up to the second floor. After walking through the corridor, he found three rooms. Fortunately, these rooms were not locked.She pushed open the door of a room at the end of the corridor, pressed the switch on the wall, but the light was still off, so she took a general picture of the room with a flashlight, and saw the wedding photo of Lu Xia's parents on the wall.

Lu Xia's parents had passed away due to illness three years ago, so it was difficult to have anything to do with the case at this time, so Qiao Shishi walked out of Lu Xia's parents' bedroom, and then entered another bedroom.

As soon as the door was opened, the familiar smell of oil paint forced Qiao Shishi, who was standing at the door, to take a step back like a heat wave. Qiao Shishi stood at the door and used a flashlight to scan the scenery inside, only to see that the room was full of Oil paintings filled every corner of the room, stacked three stories high.

Although she doesn't know how to paint, she can see that the colors in those paintings are getting more and more crazy, and the lines are getting more and more messy.According to the date signed under the paintings, most of them were painted by Lu Xia after his parents died, and it was also the time when he was abandoned by the market and depressed.

These thousands of paintings are not recognized or appreciated by anyone, so they have no value. It is conceivable how depressed and indignant their creators painted these works that no one cares about.

As time went by, Lu Xia's paintings didn't even have the most basic outlines and layouts. He seemed to be splashing oil paints on the drawing paper crazily. It was no longer painting, but rather cathartic.He trapped himself in that crazy mess of colors and lines, and then he escaped, out of the house.

Qiao Shishi wanted to take a closer look at these paintings, trying to figure out how an artist was defeated by the artwork he created.

Suddenly hearing Zhou Quliang downstairs calling "Officer Qiao", she hurried out of the bedroom to the stairs: "What's wrong?"

Zhou Quliang's strange voice came from the dim open kitchen downstairs, with a slightly vacant breath: "Come down."

Qiao Shishi trotted downstairs, and saw Zhou Quliang, who had always been straight and upright, was leaning on the counter in the kitchen, holding his forehead weakly, with a pale face, and said in a low voice: "I checked the circuit just now. , and found out that only one freezer in the kitchen was on, so I opened the freezer—"

Before he finished speaking, Qiao Shishi had already seen a freezer next to the refrigerator in the corner of the kitchen. The lid of the freezer was lifted, and only when he got close could he hear the sound of freezing inside the freezer, as well as the noise wafting out of the freezer. Dry cold white mist.

She took a few steps to the freezer with a flashlight, and the light in her hand shone in. The first thing she saw was a pair of lifeless eyes——

Qiao Shishi's pupils constricted suddenly, and the impact of facing the dead made her subconsciously take half a step back, then quickly adjusted the disordered heart rate, stepped forward again, and lit up the ice cream lying in the freezer with a flashlight. corpse.

This is a man, to be exact, a man nearly fifty years old. He is curled up at the bottom of the freezer in a weird and distorted posture, as if moss would grow in a dark and damp corner. The cold air condensed into frost, and the body was frozen as stiff as steel.

Presumably he died from negligence, so the shock and fear in his eyes at this moment almost tore his pupils, and the whites of his eyes were torn open, revealing several bloodshot red marks.

The first time she saw the corpse, Qiao Shishi thought he looked familiar. After she pressed the corpse's face down and carefully identified his side face, she confirmed that the frozen corpse lying in the freezer was her who was watching the surveillance video. The 'Professor' I've seen in.

The professor disappeared on August 28th, and it turned out that he died here.

When she touched the corpse just now, a bit of frost stuck to her fingertips, and now it hurts and itches like bugs gnawing at her skin.

Qiao Shishi rubbed his fingertips vigorously, then turned to face Zhou Quliang, with a calm and serious tone: "Recall carefully, from the day before yesterday to now, has Lu Xia, the owner of this house, ever come back?"

Compared with professional policemen, Zhou Quliang was not so calm when facing the dead. He resisted the unceasing discomfort in his stomach. Even though it was difficult to concentrate, he still focused on recalling for a while with her, and then said: "No , I’ve been at home these days, he probably hasn’t come back.”

Qiao Shishi closed the lid of the freezer again, and leaned against the freezer, lost in thought.

According to Chu Xingyun's speculation, Lu Xia's escape from the hospital means that his mind is not blank, or that he has remembered something before choosing to escape. If Lu Xia has something to do with the corpse at this time, or he're remembering 'If you find the corpse in the freezer, you will definitely go back to check——

So she is hesitating whether to move the body away now. If Lu Xia hasn't come back yet, then there is a 80.00% chance that he will go back to the place where the body was hidden to relive the thrill of killing or to verify what he did, that is to say, to lie in ambush here It is very likely that Lu Xia will be guarded until Lu Xia, so if the body is removed now, it may scare the snake.

She took out her mobile phone to contact Fu Yi and asked the team to send more people.

Before the phone was dialed out, two dogs barking came from the gate suddenly.

Zhou Quliang was the first to react: "It's dumplings."

At this time, the dog barked more urgently, as if it was biting something.

Qiao Shishi immediately picked up his mobile phone, opened the door and quickly ran across the yard for a few steps and climbed up the fence, just in time to see the back of a man running away under the street lamp.

"stop!"

She jumped down from the fence, and chased after the man in the background who was walking away.

It was not only Qiao Shishi who was chasing him, but also a big golden retriever with four legs. The golden retriever took advantage of the innate advantage of the species to catch up with the man faster than her, opened its mouth involuntarily and rushed towards him.

Even though they were far away, Qiao Shishi clearly saw the dumpling biting the man's arm, pulling back and forth like biting a piece of rag.

The man fell to the ground and kept crying out in pain, trembling from the pain.

Zhao Feng, who had finished taking the video from the security room, heard Qiao Shishi's unyielding voice, and rushed over. He happened to see the golden retriever, who was braver than a police dog, throw a man on the ground and bite him, and he gasped instantly. Taking a breath of cold air, he subconsciously covered his arms as if feeling empathy.

A trained dog only listens to its master's orders, and may be attacked if it steps forward to stop it without authorization, so Zhao Feng can only slap his palm hard to attract the golden retriever's attention.

Immediately afterwards, Qiao Shishi also arrived, clapped his hands and called the dumpling's name twice. Unexpectedly, the big golden retriever really listened to her, let go of the man's arm, took two steps back, and looked at Qiao Shishi straight away as if asking for credit. wagging tail.

Qiao Shishi knelt down, lifted the hat on the trembling man lying on the ground, met his frightened eyes, tilted his head lazily, and showed a sinister smile on his face: "Guess what? I'm really squatting on you."

Lu Xia clutched her bleeding arm, cold sweat broke out on her painful face, she didn't feel guilty at all, instead she growled angrily, "Why do you let the dog bite me? What happened when I went back to my home?!"

Qiao Shishi blinked, clicked his tongue and exclaimed: "It's amazing, you are still a movie king."

As he spoke, he waved at Zhao Feng: "Cuff it up."

Zhao Feng put handcuffs on Lu Xia, pulled him up from the ground, couldn't help looking at the big golden retriever with his tongue sticking out and wagging his tail, and asked, "Qiaoer, who owns this dog? Bring it back to the team and confess it, let us All police dogs learn from others."

When mentioning the owner of the dumpling, Qiao Shishi remembered Zhou Quliang, and was about to go back to find him, when she saw the dumpling rushing towards her.

She looked back and saw Zhou Quliang walking slowly under the street lamp as if he was tired, when he was thrown by the golden retriever, he was thrown down.

"You take him back first, and then find a few people to come back and move the corpse."

After Qiao Shishi finished speaking in a hurry, he had already disappeared.

"Are you all right, Mr. Zhou?"

Qiao Shishi squatted beside him with a smile, and a pair of peach blossom eyes showed a strange light.

Zhou Quliang closed his eyes and frowned, and pushed the golden-haired face out of his arms, and said in a calm tone: "Officer Qiao, please help pull the dumplings aside, I'm dizzy with blood."

Qiao Shishi originally thought that he was "sick of a corpse", but he didn't expect him to be fainted of blood. He suddenly opened his eyes wide in surprise, and a slight smile flowed from the corners of his eyes, dragging the dumpling out of his arms , and said: "The dumplings have made great achievements, but you still despise them."

As he said that, he took out a tissue and wiped off the blood on a strand of hair sticking to the golden retriever's mouth, and finally held its face and kissed it, and praised: "That's great, I'll send you a pennant later."

When the dizziness faded away, Zhou Quliang realized how indecent he was sitting on the ground, so he stood up with some difficulty, pressed his twitching temples and said to Qiao Shishi: "If you can't leave here now If you want, you can come to my house and sit for a while."

Qiao Shishi stood up, patted his hands for the absence of dust, and said carelessly: "No need, my colleague will be here soon, I'll just wait here, you can go back and rest."

Seeing the corpse and blood again, Zhou Quliang was really stimulated tonight. After standing for a while, his legs felt weak again, so he took a few steps back to the side of the road, and simply sat on the roadside stone, holding his forehead and closing his eyes. Eyes repose.

Qiao Shishi walked over and sat down beside him, looked at him with his arms around his knees and asked, "Why are you sitting here if you don't go home?"

Zhou Quliang closed his eyes, spoke in a low and soft voice, and said softly: "You are not safe as a girl, I will wait with you."

The girl Qiao Shishi froze for a moment, then hugged the big golden retriever, buried her face in the golden retriever's neck and shook it vigorously like hugging a plush toy.

Hearing her humming and chirping laughter, Zhou Quliang opened his wet and dark eyes to look at her with some doubts: "What's wrong?"

Qiao Shishi held the golden retriever in his arms and remained silent. After holding back for a long time, he said: "I like dumplings."

Zhou Quliang took a long breath, closed his eyes, and continued to massage his swollen temples: "Oh, it's very sensible."